Passion all around – An interview with David Arendale

David Arendale, Assoc Prof Emeritus History and Higher Education, University of Minnesota

Passion all around

Interview by Lynn Milburn, Coordinator, Peer Support, Deakin University

I had the opportunity to talk with David Arendale, the passionate teaching and learning leader from the University of Minnesota. Many of you have read his research, which includes best education practices, peer learning, peer leaders’ personal growth and using social media and podcasting. Some of you have likely met him—this year he was the keynote speaker at the 2019 Australasian PASS and Peer Learning Conference. In fact, before talking with David, I had him placed smack in the middle of my PASS schema, as I had encountered much of his research when investigating PASS at Deakin. And while he is certainly passionate about PASS and other forms of peer support, his interests and passions run wide and deep. Melissa Zaccagnini had asked David to attend the PASS conference because his broad research background would provide a great base for exploring peer learning far beyond PASS.

As I listened to David, I could feel his “community of practiceness”—I knew he was ‘one of us’! For him, it is not about one person giving so another can receive—it is fully about sharing and learning from each other. When we discussed the notion of community of practice, he explained his view with a great example. He stressed that there are all kinds of things that PASS (SI) leaders are doing and thinking, things that they do not talk about with supervisors but will certainly discuss amongst themselves. He related this to a community of practice, using his metaphor of an “underground” where you can talk and solve problems with like-minded people who share the same issues. There is no need to go to supervisors, as the community is such an effective way of sharing and addressing issues.

A very interesting example David gave of peer leaders discussing issues amongst themselves (in the underground!) involved rule breaking—being willing to break the rules to help students. He explained that in the US version of PASS (SI), it had been considered essential to stress that student leaders must never do things like give mini lectures or give answers, to ensure that SI was not seen as taking away from professors. However, there are actually times in SI sessions when students are so lost that the strategy of having students find their own answer just does not work. SI leaders see the need to break the rule, while being very nuanced and careful about how they give any answers. David explained the importance of us realizing that things will be done (regardless of any ‘rules’), and that the key is to learn how to do them well, saying, “Let’s figure out the purpose of what’s behind what they are doing and why, and shine a light on it and use the underground to figure out how to do it.” I saw this as an excellent example of the SI leaders using critical thinking to solve problems, as opposed to blindly following a rule that someone made up.

David has always been determined to find out what he can do as an instructor to make the time he has in front of students more useful for learning. He has spent the last 10 years working on ways to make his class more inclusive and has developed a range of uses for learning through IT. According to David, who claims he heard this expression elsewhere, “technology is designed to humble teachers before their students”. But really, technology creates continuous, real-life learning. David explained that students want technology to be used for meaningful learning and absolutely do NOT want it to be used so the teacher can show off or try to entertain them. Although many teachers may assume that students know everything about IT, this is not always the case, he says, so it is important to scaffold any skills needed for using the technology in a meaningful way. Students expect to receive any training and support needed to do whatever the project requires, and David provides this, for example, by demonstrating during class or addressing through tutorials. David emphasised that he is no expert, and he often stumbles (in front of the students, of course!) in getting the technology to work. I saw this as an informal “Students as Partners” opportunity, where the professor works in the same learning space as his students to solve a problem together.

David uses technology as a tool for both learning and assessment. He described some of the projects that his students have been involved in using IT, such as creating a podcast for the university’s study website to help students prepare for exams. Digital storytelling is big in the US, and David has used animoto.com so that students can bring together images, music and text to showcase their learning in his class. He has placed entire classes online so students could have a space to return to the learnings as needed. He also spoke a lot about the value of using history simulations, as students find history simulations and the role-playing that is involved as the most meaningful learning activities in the course. After talking with David, I googled “history simulations” and the second link that came up took me straight to a page David created with numerous history simulations, complete with lesson plans and the learning materials required to use the simulations effectively!

If you ever feel the need for a passion infusion, my recommendation is to head to arendale.org, and you will find it all: resources, blogs, publications, talks, and so much more (including the history simulations mentioned above). In case you are not after passion but need an injection of awe, still go to the site, as I do not believe that I have ever seen a site where both quality and quantity are so well retained!